The Crumhorn is an odd instrument. It was always considered odd in
England, and never really caught on, although it was more popular in the rest of Europe,
particularly in Germany. Nicholas Lander (see the Links page) reckons that crumhorns existed from
the 14th to 18th centuries, and I won't argue.

The crumhorn is basically a small shawm, but it has two
distinguishing features. Firstly, the reed is enclosed in a "windcap", or pressure chamber, which
is just big enough to completely enclose the reed. Rather than hold the reed in the mouth, the
player simply blows into the windcap mouthpiece, and the reed vibrates freely. It's similar to
the bagpipe idea, but the "bag" is made of wood, and there are no drones. This largely eliminates
any control over dynamics, but it makes it possible to play on horseback. That's not entirely a
facetious remark - one of Dürer's illustrations shows crumhorns being played from a moving
cart in a procession, where shawm players would be in danger of cracking their reeds at the first
jolt, if not swallowing them. The crumhorn wasn't the only windcap instrument. It shared some of
its history with sordunes, kortholts and bassanelli, all of which I may get round to writing
about eventually. Please bookmark this site and pester me by email if I forget.

The second distinguishing feature of crumhorns is that the lower end
of the crumhorn is bent, in almost a semicircle. There are various explanations for this, none of
which make much sense. The bend has to be formed after the bore is drilled, and even with modern
technology, the bending process turns obscene quantities of otherwise good proto-crumhorns into
firewood. Perhaps the crumhorn's ancestor was originally made with an attached cow horn like some
early bagpipes, and when the all-wood crumhorn was developed, they kept the bend for sentimental
reasons. Another theory is that the sound of a consort of crumhorns is so thick and rich that a
player needs the end bent back up towards him so that he can hear what he's playing. My own
theory is that it's simply a reflection of medieval trade guilds' restrictive practices - make it
difficult, convince buyers that it's necessary, and no-one but a time-served guild apprentice can
produce the goods.

Modern reconstructions of crumhorns are mainly based on renaissance
models. These had a parallel bore, with a very slight bell at the end. They were made in sizes
from soprano to bass, of course. They make a pleasant, rich buzzing noise, and sound wonderful
when played in consort, but they have a limited range (an octave and one note), which restricts
them to simple dances and specially written easy consort pieces. They were therefore an excellent
instrument for idle gentry who couldn't face the commitment required to play viols, and they are
amply capable of fulfilling the same object nowadays, as a fair amount of music survives. Their
greatest period of popularity was probably the early to middle sixteenth century.

If you want an even richer sound, you need a contrabass instrument.
I'm sure contrabass crumhorns were made, but there was another answer. Not long after the curtal
was invented by "folding" a bass shawm, someone took the idea even further, and produced a folded
contrabass shawmish thing. This time not two, but nine bores were drilled into a big, fat
cylinder of wood, and joined at the top or bottom as appropriate to form a very long, winding
bore in what looks to the uninitiated like a large wooden coffee jar. Working out where to drill
finger-holes must have been a nightmare. The problem was cracked, but it meant, in places,
drilling two or even three holes of different sizes into different bores, the holes emerging at
the same place on the outside so that a single finger could cover them. Now that's technology.
The bore was kept parallel, and there was no bell, so if I remember my physics right, that pushes
the pitch down an octave. The result is a quiet instrument called a Rackett, which is less than a
foot long, but gets notes half an octave below the curtal. Strictly speaking, it's not part of
the crumhorn family, as it has an open reed like a shawm, but the sound is similar, and it makes
an excellent contrabass to a crumhorn consort.

The rackett has one major problem. Unlike other woodwind instruments,
there's no easy way to mop out the excess water when you've finished playing it. Wooden instruments
don't like being wet for long periods, and disaster can occasionally result. There is one 17th
century report of a rackett "blowing up". It was probably just the wood splitting with a loud crack,
but it caused great consternation to the owner.